Iraqi special forces fight a fierce, entrenched foe inside Mosul

ISIL uses suicide car bombers, booby traps and ambushes from secret tunnels take heavy toll in bid to push further into the city.

A wounded Iraqi special forces soldier is treated at a field hospital in Gogjali, on the eastern edge of Mosul, on November 6, 2016. Marko Drobnjakovic / AP Photo

Erbil, Iraq // Iraqi forces fighting their way into Mosul are bogged down in vicious street fighting and are struggling to secure ground against ISIL fighters holed up in the dense urban sprawl of the city’s periphery.

Hit by suicide vehicle bombs and roadside bombs, and with their air support impeded by the extremists’ use of civilians as human shields, Iraqi special forces are battling an elusive enemy that defends from well-prepared positions and springs surprise attacks on columns of armoured vehicles that have penetrated the city.

The fighting is taking its toll on the elite Iraqi Special Operations Forces, also known as the Golden Division, which have entered six neighbourhoods in the east of Mosul. With many of its armoured vehicles destroyed or damaged, and casualties mounting, the troops need to be resupplied before they can continue their thrust into the city.

“We need more vehicles,” said Gen Fadhel Barwari, the commander of ISOF Brigade 1, which is at the heart of the fighting.

The Golden Brigade entered the district of Gogjali just outside Mosul on November 1, and launched into the suburbs of the city on November 4. The districts it entered were still contested on Sunday, when the army’s 9th Armoured Division joined the attack, entering the city from the south-west. On the south bank of the Tigris, the 15th Division remains 20 kilometres from the city, and is fighting for control of Hammam Al Alil, a small town next to the river.

ISIL has had time to prepare its defence of the city it stormed in June 2014, and is mounting a guerrilla-style fightback against the advancing Iraqi troops. The insurgents have littered Mosul with improvised explosive devices and dug tunnels to avoid air strikes and move it fighters undetected. Scores of fanatical jihadists stand ready to drive explosive-packed vehicles into the columns of the special forces. With brutal disregard for civilians lives, ISIL kept inhabitants penned in the city, and even forced the population of surrounding villages into Mosul to use as human shields.

Several reports have emerged of the terror group herding civilians from their homes on the south bank of the Tigris, and the UN estimates that at least 5,370 families were abducted from the Al Shura subdistrict near Hammam Al Alil late last month.

The use of human shields by ISIL is “just their latest cruelty against beleaguered civilians”, Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The presence of civilians in contested neighbourhoods is limiting the use of coalition air power and artillery, one of the biggest assets in the battle for Mosul, which began when Iraqi and Kurdish forces advanced on the city on October 17. It also impedes the soldiers operating on the ground. The conditions are so difficult that columns of ISOF Humvees are often restricted to driving up and down the main thoroughfares, unable to penetrate further into a neighbourhood, said an officer with the Golden Division.

resident of areas retaken by Iraqi troops are fleeing the city in terror. Close to 34,000 people have fled the fighting since the operation began three weeks ago – thousands of them from Gogjali in recent days. The UN fears that up to 700,000 people could be displaced by the battle, overwhelming aid agencies and causing a humanitarian crisis.

ISIL’s defence of Mosul is markedly stronger than the resistance offered in the towns and villages of the surrounding Nineveh plains. Aware that it lacks the manpower to hold the ground outside the city, the terror group contented itself with fighting a rearguard action intended to delay the assault on the city for as long as possible. With most of its foreign fighters killed, many of the jihadists in Mosul are locals, Iraqi commanders believe.

“ISIS has kept the best fighters inside the city. But ISIS today is not like three or six months ago. Now its very rare to find foreign fighters among them. The foreign fighters fight until they die,” said Maj Gen Najim Al Jubouri, the officer leading the Mosul campaign.

In another taste of how ISIL may channel its murderous fanaticism after its last major bastion in Iraq has been taken, suicide attacks claimed at least 25 lives in the cities of Samarra and Tikrit. ISIL has launched such attacks against civilians with deadly regularity since it stormed across the Syrian border in 2014, and the death toll spikes each time Iraqi forces advance on one of its strongholds. During the campaign to retake Fallujah in the spring, suicide bombings were an almost daily occurrence in Baghdad.

Once ISIL ceases to hold territory, many expect it to survive as an insurgency seeking to destabilise the country with such terror attacks.